Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 22, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 22, 2010 The new startup arms race (for Huffington Post) The Huffington Post published an op-ed on the Startup Visa movement that Ive been working on for some time. Ive quoted from the article extensively below, but I hope youll take a moment and read the whole thing.

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SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers - SoCal CTO , November 1, 2010 I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. And I tried to evaluate the idea and figure out: What did the founder really need here? Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ? So what gives?

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, September 10, 2008 A new version of the Joel Test (draft) (This article is a draft - your comments are especially welcome as I think through these issues. I have been thinking a lot about what a new version of this test would look like, given what Ive seen work and not work in startups.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Ever since that time, I have struggled to explain how the feedback loop in customer development should interface with the feedback loop in product development. Eric Ries Lean Startup Schematic View Of Agile Development And Customer Development View more presentations from Eric Ries.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Customer development is a parallel process to product development, which means that you dont have to give up on your dream. Our goal in product development is to find the minimum feature set required to get early customers. Instead, we do everything possible to validate the founders belief.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. In fact, this company hasn’t shipped any new products in months.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 8, 2009 Revisiting the Software Design Manifesto (and whats changed since then) My recent article on technical debt and its positive uses generated a fair bit of controversy. The economics of these process trade-offs are discussed in the Principles of Product Development Flow.)

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

All of the incentives described in the article focus on making it easy and highly desirable to launch your product: [He] claimed that launching projects is the natural state that Googles internal ecosystem tends towards, and its because they pump so much energy into pointing people in that direction. Focus on launching.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle. Thanks for writing this article. Great post Eric!

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

Andy Mathieson, a founder and managing member at Fairview Capital , was particularly supportive. Finally, after launch, 30 professional money managers, having read articles on the company, contacted kaChing out of the blue. They were interested in the tools and new distribution medium kaChing provided.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Eric, Excellent article about an essential technique for startups. To help find the right keywords, Ive written an article on my blog Web Startup Help that details How to Do Keyword Research for startups. Ive linked to your article from mine. November 12, 2008 9:35 AM aiyipianni said. December 28, 2008 6:28 PM Anonymoussaid.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

sachinrekhi : "Visionary customers are as smart if not smarter then the founders" #leanstartup Theres no skipping the chasm. At IMVU, I remember spending an incredible amount of time iterating on the model that would power our third-party developer economy. Thanks for reading, attending, commenting and questioning.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 8, 2008 Continuous integration step-by-step Lets start with the basics: Martin Fowlers original article lays out the mechanics of how to set up a CI server and the essential rules to follow while doing it. Labels: five whys root cause analysis , Test-driven development 3comments: Chris said.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Labels: five whys root cause analysis , product development 15comments: Anonymoussaid. Great article as always, Eric. Great article, Eric. I have one comment on style: could you break up your articles with subheadings? Wyatt - if you are willing to suggest specific subheads for this article, I will add them.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Luckily, I now have the benefit of a forthcoming book, The Principles of Product Development Flow. Labels: five whys root cause analysis , product development 11comments: Peter Severin said. This is a fantastic article. Sounds very similar to agile development which is the way. Interesting post.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Since we hadnt shown him much in the way of progress recently, we actually brought in the article to show off. When we finally did launch the company, even though our product had grown and changed significantly, Wired didnt cover it. New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, the works. Founders push for it.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

And how do you pick a new direction? Some startups fail because the founders cant have this conversation - they either blow up when they try, or they fail to change because they are afraid of conflict. Thats why its so essential to have a co-equal problem team. Both are lethal outcomes. Thank you so much for this insight.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

The core of the article is my first attempt to articulate the key metrics (in graph form) that I believe demonstrate customer value. You can read the article to find out why. You can read the article to find out why. Thank you for this excellent article. Thanks for the article. Retention cohort analysis.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage. The biggest source of waste in new product development is building something that nobody wants. Leverage product development with open source and third parties.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2010

In a forthcoming article Ive written advocating for the Startup Visa , I wrote this: Like other industries – from publishing to automobiles – entrepreneurship is in the process of being disrupted by globalization. So far, 2010 is shaping up to be an even more amazing year; read on to find out why.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

For startups that are tempted to mimic this behavior, I suggest reading the great account of the early Apple in Founders at Work.) I really enjoyed this article, my first time reading any of your stuff. Also SJ's obsession with better taste (positively) contributes to the overall product development process.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Sometimes, a great hacker has the potential to grow into the CTO of a company, and in those cases all you need is an outside mentor who can work with them to develop those skills. At the end of the day, the product development team of a startup (large or small) is a service organization. As usual, a fantastic article.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

Good article, this is exactly the reason Im still primarily a PHP developer rather than Ruby or Python. Nice article. very good article! I personally think that the opinion about PHP in the web-developer community is way too negative. Everybody should read your article January 16, 2009 2:40 PM Anonymoussaid.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

Interesting article, Eric. This article, like others, has challenged me to think about best practices that I found obvious, a sort of Socratic questioning of the "common sense" that perhaps makes no sense. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Well do our best to help.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

What led you to become a subscriber, versus just reading an article and leaving like everybody else? (or, Hacker News 3. In order to convince me, Id to see another link to an article here somewhere that I enjoyed. Hacker News 3. Read some articles, liked what I saw. Posted item in Facebook news feed.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

So the product development team was busy creating lots of split-tests for lots of hypotheses. That’s causing the Product Owner and team to spend more time with each other reviewing the results of experiments, which is allowing them to learn and iterate much faster. They’ve learned to see this waste.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Their recent article suggests that startups led by women are actually more successful, on average, than those led by men. One last suggestion, which is a technique I learned from my IMVU co-founder Will Harvey. One last suggestion, which is a technique I learned from my IMVU co-founder Will Harvey.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 20, 2010

Although the article is a bit me-centric, I think they did a good job capturing the fact that this is more than just the bloggers and writers, but represents a shift in thinking among entrepreneurs all over the world. The article includes comments from Kevin Dewalt and Drew Houston. Even Marc Andreessen weighs in.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

Almost to a person, we learned the key skills that would enable us to compete in this new economy in between shifts of highly regimented classes and turns of humiliation at the hands of our more popular peers. Then you set up a web app to co-ordinate volunteers who can wipe a hard drive and install Ubuntu. Good Post.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Or follow all of the New York Times columnists equally? This is good news for everyone except those who have huge legacy investments in large-batch distribution. When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. Does anyone really watch the full NBC lineup anymore?

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

An excellent article and responses. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 24, 2009 The metrics and levers of engagement, presentation on Engagement Loops for Facebook Developer Garage SF Ill be presenting a talk at the Facebook Developer Garage SF Wednesday evening. Jesse - I dont think youre responding to what I am saying, or to the original article or slides.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

I'll add two ideas: The modern structure of university patent licensing and technology transfer works really well in the life sciences and other fields with expensive product development processes. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

what are the most crucial steps to be taken by a new tech startup when outsourcing major part of the tech to IT firms or outsourcing “product development” eg new social media website project? Near shoring development with your team (ex: your team is based in Canada / India) is cool, but not outsourcing.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 11, 2010

for Harvard Business Review) In the latest article for my series in HBR, I discuss the problem of how to figure out how much process startups should have. for Harvard Business Review) In the latest article for my series in HBR, I discuss the problem of how to figure out how much process startups should have.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 21, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, October 21, 2008 Lean startups vs lean companies Venture Hacks has a great article today on lean startups. They quote extensively from two of our most important thinkers: Taiichi Ohno , creator of the Toyota Production System, and Kent Beck , creator of extreme programming. Go read it.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

By only releasing vanity metrics , companies co-opt the press into helping them mislead others. Is that really news? Or take a recent TechCrunch article about a startup I wont name: “X billion messages sent since June 2009.&# These articles treat this as a huge number, and it is. Is that really news?

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